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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Hated the fact that I got so many dropped frames when watching videos in WinDoze (now I know that my video card was to blame)

HATED the WinDoze concept of "Genuine Advantage" and "Activation" and the fact that every time you reinstall WinDoze you have to retype a 25-character ASCII encryption key, be connected to the Internet as soon as you install, and click "Activate" (and on top of that I feared the "Hacktivation" horror stories)

Malware: Let's not forget the times when I got attacked by back doors, Trojans, worms, viruses, and plenty of other nuisances that took a reformat and reinstallation to fix

If I went the cr@ppŁe route, I would have had crippled-down overpriced hardware that would have been tied to another proprietary OS

Hi all,
My computer went down my Windows went down, I had no money for a new Windows (it is about 35% of a price of your computer) - so I tried Linux. And I was lost. Now only Linux. Windows works for me now only as a game-station (I like play games). Greetings.

Windows isn't really that bad although they do have a bunch of security holes that can't work out. And any virus, malware, and other stuff like that can be removed with out reformat. Its just a pain . So there for reformat is a sure deal. With Linux if you get something like that an your on a normal accout like you should be it is much easier to delete your viruses or just delete your home directory. The only thing I really use windows for is now is to play some games. I would be able to play games on my system now but I got an old video care radeon x700 pro which ati dropped support for. So I had to do a roll back on xorg to get it to work but I have some 3d related issues here and there. So keep in mind linux distros can cause old hardware not to work also. But if the hardware manufactures would release enough info 3rd parties can write an updated driver with full functionality. But thats not going to happen. Even though they dropped support.

The main reasons I like Linux is first off "Freedom is Open source". I don't have to worry about getting into any legal fight with some company thanks to Linus and all the Open source communities.

Linux is more secure (Granted with a little bit of sys admin knowledge). All holes can be pointed out because the source is openly viewable.

You have more privacy. You don't agree to any terms to let some Linux distrubtion say that have the right to inspect your harddrive at any time they wish.

Linux you can leave running for over a year where windows you have to do restarts or experience greatly reduced performance. So Linux when the stability price again (Again with decent Sys admin knowledge. Being new to linux and always using root you may find your self wrecking your system lol like me always trying to do something new and out of the ordinary. But if a newbie is new to a system they can avoid root and have a steady running system. )

I started using linux for one program -- distributed computing (distributed dot net -- brute-force cracking of an encrypted message to prove a point I think). The client software would run under MS-DOS, but you couldn't run anything else (it was MS-DOS). They had a client that would run under Windows 95, but I only had Windows 3.1. So I started dual-booting in July 1998 (Windows 3.1 and Caldera 1.2 with FVWM and the 2.0.33 kernel). Right away I noticed switching between tasks was MUCH better than in Windows 3.1 (K5 chip, 166 MHz, 96 MB RAM).

Linux was not as polished back then -- 12mm of black space on one side of the monitor and 8mm or so on another side was not uncommon (hardware support has obviously improved since then). Meanwhile, hardware support in Windows has deteriorated (many chip makers totally ignored 64-bit XP, and software nowadays requires Vista or above).

Linux is hard to learn, but now the "out of the box experience" is better. This is great for casual users who don't need to tinker.

As for security, I don't click on random attachments in e-mail, go to bad websites or anything like that, and I operate without anti-virus on 64-bit XP Pro with no problems (if I did these "bad things", linux would have a great advantage here). All I have is a hardware router (to stop internet "background noise") and the Windows XP firewall.

Some say linux is just as bloated as Windows is. Maybe that's true. But after lots of use, Windows 98 used to say "60% free resources" even before running a single program, and the only way to get it back to 90% was to reinstall. And you needed a patch to run it for more than 49.7 days (remember that one?). Even though Windows has improved a lot, I suspect linux programs still uninstall much cleaner, the OS is free and there is no "registry".

Yes, I'll use Windows for some tasks (family tree, grabbing photos directly from my camera, audio/video stuff, where it makes sense to me) but I still run linux over 90% of the time. And for deleting spyware from infected drives taken out of Windows machines, nothing beats linux.

Every one is different.
I downloaded (in windows)a scanner for CIH virus back in 1993, and ran it because I had nothing better to do on April 23rd. I found 175 copies of CIH between 2 computers, and discovered one of my kids had received it on irc. So I went to linux. Then I found it was all free, and reliable!

Yes, I'll use Windows for some tasks (family tree, grabbing photos directly from my camera, audio/video stuff, where it makes sense to me) but I still run linux over 90% of the time. And for deleting spyware from infected drives taken out of Windows machines, nothing beats linux.

It's funny that you mention that because I actually don't know how to get my images off my cameras in Windows. It refuses to just see them as a MSD, I have to boot into linux to get pics off.

I also started using Linux because several reasons stated in this topic, and because linux includes endless possibilities which Winbloze lacks.

But most important for me is how it works, looks, feel.
It's just a complete package which you can easily change to your liking, and not like resource editing dll's in Winbloze.
I started out with several distro's like suse, fedora en after that i tried (k)ubuntu.

I didn't see any reference to windows product activation. That was the killer for me. Suddenly you can't take your OS and use it the way you want to. There were so many silly little technicalities of it as well. Like not being able to use a retail copy of windows to reinstall a system that came with a recovery disk that can no longer be located. Getting around that can be done, but the legalities of that in itself are questionable as well. You pretty much have to pay the "extortion costs" of the manufacturer.

I have gotten so used to Linux now that every time I have to use Windows I keep thinking, why is this OS so inferior? Not to mention that most of the systems I get my hands on are virus infected at this point as well.